"Frigate" must be one of the most popular and abused
words in the world's languages. It's very popularity is indicated by the fact that is
recognizable in so many languages: fregat, fregata, etc. The abuse is demonstrated by the
many meanings it has had over the centuries.

The earliest references to frigates in the English language
occurred in the 15th Century, apparently referring to some smaller type of sailing vessel
or craft; almost certainly not a warship. No details of their appearance, means of
propulsion, or purpose have survived. Indeed, the word may have been used somewhat
generically, as we use "boat."

After 150 years, during which time naval warfare shifted from
occasional efforts by merchant ships armed and pressed into service to
built-for-the-purpose warships, and as the weapons with which they were armed became more
regularized in caliber and size, by the middle third of the 17th Century, men-of-war were
beginning to evolve as discernible types.

In the late 1620s, the English built ten small
"cruisers" (ships intended to operate independently) with which to combat
Dunkirk pirates preying on the merchant shipping in the English Channel. These were known,
fittingly, as the Lion's Whelps Class, and named First Whelp, Second Whelp, etc. Less than
a hundred feet long, and armed with ten or twelve guns, the heavy armament in the tubby
hull rendered them unsuccessful.

Then the English did what they probably should have done in the
first place: they studied the hull forms of the pirate craft they did manage to capture,
and, after some experimentation, began to design anew. They came up with a small, fast
sailing ship with a keel length to beam ratio of 4:1 or greater, a long, lean vessel
indeed. Armament was carried on the lower deck, out of the weather. The first of these
seems to have been named Constant Warwick, built in 1646 and referred to as a
"frigate." She had a keel length of about ninety feet, carried thirty guns,
displaced 379 tons, and had a shallower draft than others of that size. Adventure, built
the same year, and at least two sisters, were slightly larger and carried thirty-eight
guns. So popular was Constant Warwick that the Royal Navy decided to "improve"
her by adding another deck and more guns. End of popularity, as she then sailed like
"a slug". Within a decade, the word "frigate" was being used to denote
either a ship with a higher than usual keel:beam ratio or one with a good turn of speed.
It must be in this sense that the word was used in relation to the 90-gun Naseby.

During the 17th Century, emphasis on building more powerful ships
for the nation's battle line with two or more covered gun decks, had led to the solution
of virtually every problem associated with the building of large hulls capable of
supporting a huge number of large guns. They didn't sail well, but they could move and
delivered enormous destruction to anything foolish enough to come within range.
Inevitably, this growth in the size of ships of the line created a growing gap between
themselves and the smaller, supporting units of the navy. It was to fill this gap that the
frigate of popular history and fiction was designed.

This "new" frigate, meaning a medium size warship
capable of sustained independent operation and powerful enough to take on any warship
other than a ship of the line, seems to have had its English origin in a captured French
privateer (a licensed, private man of war) named Tygre, which was captured in 1747 and
commissioned in the Royal Navy. She carried twenty-six 9-pounder long guns on a single
covered deck, and soon was seen to be a most useful addition.

Using the design of Tygre as a basis, the Royal Navy then
designed and built the 28-gun frigates Unicorn and Lyme, the first of their type. The two
ships were not identical. Unlike any warships before, Lyme had a rounded bow (as
Constitution does) -- the first in a warship.

This provided the ship with a greater ability to withstand damage
from ahead and also meant that the crew's berthing down below could be drier (and so
healthier) because the hawse holes (by which means the anchor cables enter the hull) could
be placed one deck higher. Unlike their bigger brothers, the frigates had no galleries
weakening their sterns, just a row of windows for the Captain's cabin. French frigates,
evolving at about the same time, were more lightly built and capable of speed adequate
both to run down a prey and to escape if it should prove too strong. The British frigates
generally weren't as fast, but they were better able to stand up in a fight. The type
quickly became popular, and a requirement in many navies. The Dutch and the Danes both had
added frigates to their fleets in the 1750s. All frigates, like the line of battle ships,
were "ship-rigged" with three masts carrying square sails for propulsion. And
just as the ships of the line had grown in size in the preceding century, the frigates
quickly followed suit, to wit: Lyme (1748), 581 tons; Pallas (1756), 718 tons; Endymion
(1797), 1277 tons.

Frigates, like all major warships of that era, were rated by the
number of long guns they were designed to carry. The 28-gunners were inevitably followed
by 32s, 36s, and 38s, which became the standard frigate of the Royal Navy. The heaviest
long guns carried began as 9-pounders, but soon rose to 12- and 18-pounders, with numbers
of the smaller calibers added to the forecastle and quarterdeck above. Smaller
"swivels" also were carried, to be mounted in holes on the rails or in the
fighting tops.

In addition to growing in size and carrying larger caliber guns,
frigates underwent other changes, as well. A new "wrinkle" which may or may not
have been present in the first frigates, but happened soon afterwards, was the location of
the ship's wheel ahead of the mizzenmast.

This provided the helmsmen with greater protection from both
weather and gunfire, and made it easier for the controlling officer to be in touch with
activities at both ends of the ship. Perhaps the first change was the substitution of iron
galley stoves ("cambooses") for brick fireplaces about 1752, complete with an
iron smokestack to take smoke and some of the heat out of the ship. A major advance in the
protection of a ship's underwater body from borers occurred in 1761 when the frigate HBMS
Alarm became the first ship to be sheathed in sheet copper. It not only prevented
shipworms from getting a start, it accumulated sea weed, etc., at a slower rate than wood.

An advance important to more than just frigates took place in
1774, when the Carron Iron Company in Falkirk, Scotland, produced the first new cannon in
a century: the carronade. This weapon was short (3-4 feet long) and therefore light, but
was of large caliber bore. This meant that a ship of given displacement could carry more
of these more powerful weapons, and carry them higher in the ship without crippling
stability. The disadvantage was that its maximum effective range was only about one-third
that of a long gun. The carronade first went to sea in 1779. Experience resulted in
frigates generally carrying long guns on their gun decks and carronades above on
forecastles and quarterdecks, giving both long range punch and short range smashing power.
Indeed, "smasher" was the popular nickname of this weapon.

Throughout most of the 18th Century, frigates were rather open on
their upper decks. Quarterdeck bulwarks, enclosing roughly that area from the main mast
aft, became commonplace after the American Revolution in the Royal Navy. Similar bulwarks
around the forecastle followed about twenty years later. The French, in fact, adopted the
practice ahead of the English.

Thus, by the time Constitution was on the drawing board, the
frigate as a type had become stabilized and proven itself as the cost effective
"workhorse" of many a navy. It is no wonder that it was thought the ideal
"first effort" of a navy of limited means. Recognizing that the young country
was in no position to create a full-blown navy in short order, her designer sought to
combine what he saw as the best features of at least the French and British frigates then
in existence. His frigate would be big and strong, able to carry heavy cannon in large
numbers, and it would be fast enough to able to choose whether to fight or run. In
Constitution he achieved what was to be seen as the ultimate development of the sailing
frigate.

Since the passing of the sailing navy, the word
"frigate" has seen rather uncertain usage in the U. S. Navy. After a long
hiatus, it was revived in World War II as the "patrol frigate," an escort vessel
somewhat more capable than a patrol vessel (or "corvette") but less so than the
"destroyer escort," itself a wartime "economy model" destroyer.

Right after the war, there was designed a class of "super
destroyers" or "destroyer leaders" that were styled "frigates,"
the "patrol frigates" having been discarded. Because later classes of this type
grew into the size range of what had been cruisers, such "frigates" were so
reclassified in 1975. At the same time, the lowly "destroyer escorts," of new
design and construction but still remembered as "second rate destroyers," were
glorified with the name "frigate." And so, when we speak of frigates today we
most often mean that type of small warship primarily designed to escort convoys and fight
submarines: definitely not in the same league as the frigates of old.